Spoilers Endgame Plot Hole: Was There Really "No Other Way"?

[Batmannerism]

In Infinity War:
One of the major story conceits involves Doctor Strange going forward in time to look at all possible outcomes of the coming conflict:

We then see:

1. the Avengers/Guardians come close to defeating Thanos on Titan but lose because Star-Lord is overwhelmed by his emotions and screw up the plan when he learns about the death of Gamora.
2. Strange neglects to use the Time Stone in his fight with Thanos and willingly gives it up in exchange for Iron Man's life
3. Thor come close to killing Thanos with Stormbreaker but fail because he did not go for the head and Thanos survived long enough to use the gauntlet.

Half of all life in the universe is wiped out but as Strange turns to dust we're told that the 1 in 14,000,605 victory involved the snap happening:

This was a huge cliff hanger and raises all kinds of questions.

In Endgame

Tony Stark (alive because of Strange) is the MVP. He figures out how to retrieve the stones from other timelines and makes undoing the snap possible. He removes the stones from Thanos' gauntlet and uses them to destroy Thanos and his army.

However, we're never given a reason why Thanos completing the snap, only for the Avengers to undo it later was preferable to preventing it from happening in the first place. For me, this brings into question why there was "no other way".

We get no answers for:

1. Why couldn't Strange have used his foreknowledge to prevent Star-Lord from ruining their near victory on Titan?
   
   
2. Why couldn't Strange have used his sling ring portals to go from Titan to Earth (as we now know he can thanks to Endgame) and tell Thor to go for the head?

Does this seem like a plot hole to anyone else?

Those are fair questions, and really only the writers know for sure but IMO the answers "No and no."

My take on this is that Strange's vision in which Thanos was ultimately defeated and the population of the universe restored depended on Thanos winning in the short term.

If he'd had more time maybe Strange could have kept searching and found a different way that events played out....we'll never know.

Anyway, he knew that if a) Thanos defeated them on Titan and obtained the time stone and b) Thanos was able to obtain the mind stone on Earth, be wounded by Thor and complete the snap that c) 5 years later the Avengers would be able to restore the universe at the cost of Tony' s sacrifice.

The way it played out adds extra weight to Strange' s actions - giving away the time stone to save Tony because he knew that later on Tony would have to sacrifice himself and also when he tells Tony ( at the final battle) that if he told Tony what will happen, that it won't, because he knows Tony will have to give up his life in order to win.

Now something else to think about is that Strange called his visions "possible futures" which suggests that none of them were set in stone. IMO He was taking it on faith that if he gave up the time stone and allowed himself to be disintegrated that 5 years later things would be set right.

As for preventing the defeat on Titan and/or warning Thor to go for a head shot....I suspect that Strange saw that attempting to change things like that only further ensured Thanos' victory. At least we know that the ONLY way he saw an eventual win was to let Thanos succeed in the short term.

That's how I see it.

I loved the Stark - Strange dynamic and they were great onscreen together, I'm really sad we'll never see that again.

 

[Bayne]

My head-canon is that Strange can only see his future and only as long as the time stone exists.

The death part is fair speculation, but the other half contradicts the movie. Thanos destroyed the time stone a month after the snap. That's why they had to go back in time to retrieve it from the ancient one. If he can't see past the moment the stone is destroyed, he would never have known that this timeline is the successful one.

How is that a greater good than preventing the snap in the first place?

If Strange had used his foresight to prevent Quill from screwing up the plan on Titan then

• Vision, Widow and Tony wouldn't have to die.
• The snap survivors wouldn't have to go through the trauma of losing loved ones and spending five years in a post-apocalyptic world.
• The snap victims wouldn't have to struggle to rebuild their lives after not existing for five years (during which new people will have moved into their homes and taken over their jobs, their loved ones will have aged or died etc)

That assumes that the plan on Titan succeeding would end the threat of Thanos. That's not a reasonable assumption when Dr. Strange, who literally helped create that plan, chose not to let it succeed because his future visions told him some other way was the only way to win.

Presumably, if the Avengers succeeded in taking the stones at that point, they would leave Thanos alive (because they wouldn't have any reason to kill him) and eventually, somewhere down the line, he would get all the stones anyway. Or someone else would get all the stones and do even worse.

 

[Random490]

The death part is fair speculation, but the other half contradicts the movie. Thanos destroyed the time stone a month after the snap. That's why they had to go back in time to retrieve it from the ancient one. If he can't see past the moment the stone is destroyed, he would never have known that this timeline is the successful one.

But the time stone reenters the timeline because of the time heist. It is present in Strange's future and as a result he can view the final battle. So even for a sorcerer who survives the snap they would be unable to see what happens during those five years, not until the Hulk returns from the past and not after cap leaves at the end. My reasoning for the requirement of the time stone is just to throw away the plot device of "why didn't he see the next big threat".

So from Strange's perspective here's a progression of his visions of which he sees many slight variations of.

• He sees himself dies, never sure if he's success
• He Sees himself runaway and either gets caught off guard by Thanos later, or lives with guilt knowing that 4 stones is more than enough for Thanos to continue his galactic genocidal campaign. Either way, not good enough.
• We have to take it at Strange's word that stopping Quill wouldn't have work, just because we didn't see what would have happened as a result doesn't garantee it's a positive outcome.
• He sees himself give up the stone to save Tony, die then return.
  • The first that happens is that he, along with Spider-man and the Guardians, return to Earth but don't learn about Thanos' attack until it's too late.
  • Next time he gets the Guardians and Spider-man to the battle, but realizes the scale of what they're dealing with and fail for not being prepared enough.
  • So he spends one iteration talking to everyone involved to see who he can bring to help. (The Avengers know of Wakanda, Guardians know of the Ravagers, Ant-man knows of Wasp, etc. Captain Marvel was already traveling in space so her exact whereabouts were unknown which is why she couldn't be portaled there.)
  • Then he spends the 5-10 minutes after the snap back to contact all the forces and tell them to be ready and opens the portal.
  • The battle needs to last longer enough for Captain Marvel to destroy the Black Aster which is why holding back the flood was essential.
  • The only sure end to the battle was to snap Thanos' forces away, with the new gauntlet damages and too large for anyone's hand, only Tony's armor was capable of making a new gauntlet on the fly. Snap they win and Strange's vision of the future ends when Cap returns to the past.

That assumes that the plan on Titan succeeding would end the threat of Thanos. That's not a reasonable assumption when Dr. Strange, who literally helped create that plan, chose not to let it succeed because his future visions told him some other way was the only way to win.

Presumably, if the Avengers succeeded in taking the stones at that point, they would leave Thanos alive (because they wouldn't have any reason to kill him) and eventually, somewhere down the line, he would get all the stones anyway. Or someone else would get all the stones and do even worse.

I don't think the Avengers would let him live, but if Thanos survives then he always have another chance at the stones, even after the time skip Thanos knows about Time travel now. The way it ended was a definitive end to the threat for all time.

 

[Bayne]

But the time stone reenters the timeline because of the time heist. It is present in Strange's future and as a result he can view the final battle. So even for a sorcerer who survives the snap they would be unable to see what happens during those five years, not until the Hulk returns from the past and not after cap leaves at the end. My reasoning for the requirement of the time stone is just to throw away the plot device of "why didn't he see the next big threat".

So from Strange's perspective here's a progression of his visions of which he sees many slight variations of.

• He sees himself dies, never sure if he's success
• He Sees himself runaway and either gets caught off guard by Thanos later, or lives with guilt knowing that 4 stones is more than enough for Thanos to continue his galactic genocidal campaign. Either way, not good enough.
• We have to take it at Strange's word that stopping Quill wouldn't have work, just because we didn't see what would have happened as a result doesn't garantee it's a positive outcome.
• He sees himself give up the stone to save Tony, die then return.
  • The first that happens is that he, along with Spider-man and the Guardians, return to Earth but don't learn about Thanos' attack until it's too late.
  • Next time he gets the Guardians and Spider-man to the battle, but realizes the scale of what they're dealing with and fail for not being prepared enough.
  • So he spends one iteration talking to everyone involved to see who he can bring to help. (The Avengers know of Wakanda, Guardians know of the Ravagers, Ant-man knows of Wasp, etc. Captain Marvel was already traveling in space so her exact whereabouts were unknown which is why she couldn't be portaled there.)
  • Then he spends the 5-10 minutes after the snap back to contact all the forces and tell them to be ready and opens the portal.
  • The battle needs to last longer enough for Captain Marvel to destroy the Black Aster which is why holding back the flood was essential.
  • The only sure end to the battle was to snap Thanos' forces away, with the new gauntlet damages and too large for anyone's hand, only Tony's armor was capable of making a new gauntlet on the fly. Snap they win and Strange's vision of the future ends when Cap returns to the past.

I don't think the Avengers would let him live, but if Thanos survives then he always have another chance at the stones, even after the time skip Thanos knows about Time travel now. The way it ended was a definitive end to the threat for all time.

Using the time stone is heavily portrayed as a 'fast-forward/rewind' kind of viewing the future. Strange would have to fast-forward through 5 years of there being no stone to see that the stone returns and everything works out. Which he couldn't do, because there would be no stone to show him that time, so why would he try to look any farther down that timeline?

 

[moreorless]

As others have already said, probably Strange saw that any other action would have caused a reaction to effect approximately the same result anyway, except for that one singular path.
It is not "debatable" in-universe, the writers wrote it that way: obviously they could have created a different story but they went with this, effectively preemptively voiding plot holes about Strange's behavior and decisions.
He is so powerful he has to be plot nerfed.

Pretty much, I think by quoting such a large number of possible futures they mean to imply that Strange has viewed how events unfold on a micro level. That certain alternative plans that might seem possible aren't due to Thanos's reaction to them or other events.

 

[Random490]

Using the time stone is heavily portrayed as a 'fast-forward/rewind' kind of viewing the future. Strange would have to fast-forward through 5 years of there being no stone to see that the stone returns and everything works out. Which he couldn't do, because there would be no stone to show him that time, so why would he try to look any farther down that timeline?

For my theory, it's all from his perspective. Getting dusted, then reappearing is instantaneous from his point of view. From what we get from Spider-man the dusted returned without experiencing any loss in time. Per my theory, he would not be able to see what happens during those five years.

As he's going through potential futures he find one in which he gives up the stone, dies and returns in the blink of an eye. So he then decides to explore that branching path more until he finds the right sequence.

Let's just say he doesn't need to be alive/conscious/have the time stone exist to perceive the future. Using a DVD analogy, I would assume if he had no future in the timeline then the play through would just stop and return to the disc menu. But if he finds himself fast forwarding through five years worth of darkness that would stand out and be worth increasing the fast forwarding speed until he regains consciousness.

 

[InCali]

Those are fair questions, and really only the writers know for sure but IMO the answers "No and no."

My take on this is that Strange's vision in which Thanos was ultimately defeated and the population of the universe restored depended on Thanos winning in the short term.

If he'd had more time maybe Strange could have kept searching and found a different way that events played out....we'll never know.

Anyway, he knew that if a) Thanos defeated them on Titan and obtained the time stone and b) Thanos was able to obtain the mind stone on Earth, be wounded by Thor and complete the snap that c) 5 years later the Avengers would be able to restore the universe at the cost of Tony' s sacrifice.

The way it played out adds extra weight to Strange' s actions - giving away the time stone to save Tony because he knew that later on Tony would have to sacrifice himself and also when he tells Tony ( at the final battle) that if he told Tony what will happen, that it won't, because he knows Tony will have to give up his life in order to win.

Now something else to think about is that Strange called his visions "possible futures" which suggests that none of them were set in stone. IMO He was taking it on faith that if he gave up the time stone and allowed himself to be disintegrated that 5 years later things would be set right.

As for preventing the defeat on Titan and/or warning Thor to go for a head shot....I suspect that Strange saw that attempting to change things like that only further ensured Thanos' victory. At least we know that the ONLY way he saw an eventual win was to let Thanos succeed in the short term.

That's how I see it.

I loved the Stark - Strange dynamic and they were great onscreen together, I'm really sad we'll never see that again.

I like your explanations. I've said it before and I'll say it again "Because the writers said so, that's why!!". In any case, I don't see any plot holes that can't be reasonably explained.

About the Strange and Stark interactions, COMPLETELY agree. Here we have 2 of the brightest, most humble (LOL) characters going head to head. Both are terrific actors and that combo was great. I liked how the relationship matured over (a short period of) time and the respect grew.

 

[MahvelBaby!]

I mean...it was still awesome lol

 

[TheVileOne]

here's a bigger plothole. What happens when billions of people who were dusted suddenly just reappear on Earth?

 

[Yowza]

here's a bigger plothole. What happens when billions of people who were dusted suddenly just reappear on Earth?

There were probably a lot of deaths from scenarios of being stuck out in the ocean reminiscent of "Open Water" along with getting hit by traffic or falling out of the sky or non-animate lifeforms like trees transposing themselves into some places where people are actually sitting killing them. The casualties were natural though and not caused by the mad titan Thanos letting natural course of events let people find their own way out.

An economic collapse follows due to jobless people trying to get back to where they were at or taking the place of people that took their spot not to mention credits being bad or trying to regain lost houses or vehicles. Some got by while some didn't...

Oh wait, all that doesn't fit within the focus of the storyline so we'll just have to imagine things came together somehow.

 

[Yowza]

Overall, I think a lot of movies turn the blind eye to certain things to simply go from point A to B to C and so on within a story. The final Avengers movies have so many elements on such a massive scale not to mention such mixture of characters that when I think of it I just have to stop.

 

[TheVileOne]

Overall, I think a lot of movies turn the blind eye to certain things to simply go from point A to B to C and so on within a story. The final Avengers movies have so many elements on such a massive scale not to mention such mixture of characters that when I think of it I just have to stop.

Many beloved and "good" movies are guilty of this. Not just Avengers.

Sort of like in Back to the Future, Marty McFly returns to a timeline and life that's sort of not his own because of the things he altered. Eric Stoltz actually said something like this during a table read, and Lea Thompson said it was the "wrong thing to say" at the time. He later got fired from the film and replaced by Michael J. Fox.

You just have to sort of accept Marty superficially altered certain events in his timeline and his father was less of a wuss and he got a sweet truck.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

here's a bigger plothole. What happens when billions of people who were dusted suddenly just reappear on Earth?

I don't want considering these kinds of ramifications to be a main focus in the MCU. No one is going to these films for a real world dissertation about the affect of instantaneous world wide population decreases or increases...

But something that big, that absolutely game changing , that completely status quo shattering... You gotta give us something and something not playing it off like a joke that is then never brought up again.

Here is part one of the issue... This isn't something pedantic fans are projecting onto the MCU. From the build up of Thanos as a threat to the way the decimation of life was presented and it's effect on the heroes... They sure as hell made a very big effort to invest us in this element of the shared universe and it paid off to the tunes of billions of dollars for Marvel. I complain about how half of their output is pretty low stakes feeling and lightweight all the time... This would not be one of those times. They played it straight and the payoff was the audience, under the umbrella of suspension of disbelief of course, emotionally invested in the plot and characters. An outgrowth of actually caring though is indeed to be invested in the wider world and what the ramifications of the story imply for it. What does it mean for the characters and their world?

Again... For big escapist four quadrant entertainment pop corn movies... I get that this cannot really be a huge focus. But it should be addressed in some fashion given the weight and importance and the dramatic pull it had as part of the one two punch of IW and EG.

Part two of the issue for me is... In discussing the adaptation of the Infinity Gauntlet story fans often talked about how the story was ultimately empty because of the way, as comics do, things went back to the standard status quo for the most part at the tale's conclusion. And... Okay, I get that. Especially in live action you want things more, well, real. This is where things like the five year gap and Tony having a child come in. And I would think film makers and fans will protest my following characterizations as being untrue.

"There was massive change to the MCU. Cap is old. Tony is dead. Tasha is dead. Hulk has a bad arm. There's so much different!"

Okay... True enough on the surface sure. But I would argue things like Tony, Cap and Tasha have less to do with pure story and a lot more to do with contracts and actors moving on from roles. Had RDJ, Evans and ScarJo wanted to continue on the story would reflect that. As such RDJ's compensation was becoming an issue, Evans was looking to broaden his resume and try new things and I suspect after she does that solo the same goes for Johansson. Now that still means we got changes, sure, which are important to the community of heroes going forward... But the world and people they protect, and the importance of which was driven home in the two biggest films in the studio's history? That doesn't seem to matter and seeing how this is the world our heroes live in... That's odd as ****. While one can say that the comic book story's finale was "cheap" because of using the macguffin to reset to the original status quo... I think it's even more cheap to build up the drama and importance of an event, not go for a reset but then for all purposes have the world play out the same exact way as if there was a reset to the status quo before the story's start with not an ounce of dramatic exploration of the aftermath, and worse reference it only as a source for jokes... Which is exactly how it has gone so far.

I get that AEG was not the place to even begin to deal with this issue. That makes sense. And I also get that FFH being the first film after, they wanted to have a bit of a palette cleanser to the heavier tone of IW/AEG, but dealing with the Snap purely as a joke there doesn't bode well for this logical aspect to be given any real weight going forward. It will likely never really be dealt with and just go down the memory hole.

And thus... Why I feel half of Marvel's output is too often weightless, inoffensive and bland time killers. Too often they don't want to explore anything of weight, they just want to entertain with empty spectacle (Empty because their investment in drama is so pro forma and perfunctory half the time) and easy broad humor (For all those saying comedy is hard... Even comedians comment that there are things such as cheap laughs. So no... Comedy can indeed be "easy", and relatively inexpensive lacking a need of investment both real world and in terms of how a story plays out. Drama requires a lot more screen time where most jokes or humor require a hell of a lot less set up.) to get over with the audience, ESPECIALLY the foreign markets where the nuances of the characters and dialog easily get lost in translation but big btoad approaches to spectacle and humor are much more digestible to another culture.

 

[TheVileOne]

I don't want considering these kinds of ramifications to be a main focus in the MCU. No one is going to these films for a real world dissertation about the affect of instantaneous world wide population decreases or increases...

But something that big, that absolutely game changing , that completely status quo shattering... You gotta give us something and something not playing it off like a joke that is then never brought up again.

Here is part one of the issue... This isn't something pedantic fans are projecting onto the MCU. From the build up of Thanos as a threat to the way the decimation of life was presented and it's effect on the heroes... They sure as hell made a very big effort to invest us in this element of the shared universe and it paid off to the tunes of billions of dollars for Marvel. I complain about how half of their output is pretty low stakes feeling and lightweight all the time... This would not be one of those times. They played it straight and the payoff was the audience, under the umbrella of suspension of disbelief of course, emotionally invested in the plot and characters. An outgrowth of actually caring though is indeed to be invested in the wider world and what the ramifications of the story imply for it. What does it mean for the characters and their world?

Again... For big escapist four quadrant entertainment pop corn movies... I get that this cannot really be a huge focus. But it should be addressed in some fashion given the weight and importance and the dramatic pull it had as part of the one two punch of IW and EG.

Part two of the issue for me is... In discussing the adaptation of the Infinity Gauntlet story fans often talked about how the story was ultimately empty because of the way, as comics do, things went back to the standard status quo for the most part at the tale's conclusion. And... Okay, I get that. Especially in live action you want things more, well, real. This is where things like the five year gap and Tony having a child come in. And I would think film makers and fans will protest my following characterizations as being untrue.

"There was massive change to the MCU. Cap is old. Tony is dead. Tasha is dead. Hulk has a bad arm. There's so much different!"

Okay... True enough on the surface sure. But I would argue things like Tony, Cap and Tasha have less to do with pure story and a lot more to do with contracts and actors moving on from roles. Had RDJ, Evans and ScarJo wanted to continue on the story would reflect that. As such RDJ's compensation was becoming an issue, Evans was looking to broaden his resume and try new things and I suspect after she does that solo the same goes for Johansson. Now that still means we got changes, sure, which are important to the community of heroes going forward... But the world and people they protect, and the importance of which was driven home in the two biggest films in the studio's history? That doesn't seem to matter and seeing how this is the world our heroes live in... That's odd as ****. While one can say that the comic book story's finale was "cheap" because of using the macguffin to reset to the original status quo... I think it's even more cheap to build up the drama and importance of an event, not go for a reset but then for all purposes have the world play out the same exact way as if there was a reset to the status quo before the story's start with not an ounce of dramatic exploration of the aftermath, and worse reference it only as a source for jokes... Which is exactly how it has gone so far.

I get that AEG was not the place to even begin to deal with this issue. That makes sense. And I also get that FFH being the first film after, they wanted to have a bit of a palette cleanser to the heavier tone of IW/AEG, but dealing with the Snap purely as a joke there doesn't bode well for this logical aspect to be given any real weight going forward. It will likely never really be dealt with and just go down the memory hole.

And thus... Why I feel half of Marvel's output is too often weightless, inoffensive and bland time killers. Too often they don't want to explore anything of weight, they just want to entertain with empty spectacle (Empty because their investment in drama is so pro forma and perfunctory half the time) and easy broad humor (For all those saying comedy is hard... Even comedians comment that there are things such as cheap laughs. So no... Comedy can indeed be "easy", and relatively inexpensive lacking a need of investment both real world and in terms of how a story plays out. Drama requires a lot more screen time where most jokes or humor require a hell of a lot less set up.) to get over with the audience, ESPECIALLY the foreign markets where the nuances of the characters and dialog easily get lost in translation but big btoad approaches to spectacle and humor are much more digestible to another culture.

My point is this. In Avengers Endgame AND Ant-Man and the Wasp, the implication is that Thanos' snap causes worldwide destruction. It's a cataclysm on a global scale. We see it with helicopters suddenly crashing.

Think about that. That's from billions of people disappearing on Earth. So what happens when billions of people suddenly just reappear out of thin air. Would it not be equally catastrophic?

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

My point is this. In Avengers Endgame AND Ant-Man and the Wasp, the implication is that Thanos' snap causes worldwide destruction. It's a cataclysm on a global scale. We see it with helicopters suddenly crashing.

Think about that. That's from billions of people disappearing on Earth. So what happens when billions of people suddenly just reappear out of thin air. Would it not be equally catastrophic?

That's what I'm referring to. Undoing what Thanos did would have as big an impact as the people disappearing. Yet only 8 months later the parents of the kids in Peter Parker's school are confident enough in the state of the world to allow two bumbling chaperones to take their kids on a trip overseas. The world seems to have picked up exactly where it left off with barely any real grappling with such gigantic events. Is there a limit with how much focus and detail a logical element like the aftermath of a biblical level event should have in a pop corn series of films based around being a good time at the theater? Yeah, I get that. Again... No one is going to these films for hard sci fi type speculation. But to just act like nothing is different outside of Cap retiring and Tony dyingvetc. feels off.

 

[BoredGuy]

Well I, for one, would not have any interest in all the future MCU movies taking place in essentially a post-apocalyptic world where, even though the heroes won, millions died when they undid the snap.

Imagine a Spider-man movie where every human being has severe PTSD and millions died upon reconstitution. Economies are in shambles, infrastructure has crumbled. Maybe for a single movie. If they made Avengers 5 right after Endgame, that had them dealing with these repurcussions, then sure, I'd be down. But for every MCU "popcorn" superhero movie for the next 5 years to be dealing with that fallout-- which would be a more "realistic" portrayal of it-- would be horrible, and dour, and something that would suck the fun and uplifting nature of these movies out of the MCU.

I get wanting to see these issues explored, but in the interest of entertainment, I'm willing to have the characters move on at an unrealistic pace.

 

[Zarex]

The impact of a 5 year dusting would have been so momentous that every MCU and TV show in Phases 4 through 11 should devote at least 10 minutes of run time on the snap and its impact. Which I absolutely do not want to see.

For that reason I would have preferred the snap was just a one year vacation. World changing, yes, but much easier to hand wave away. You would have to replace adorable moppet Morgan with a newborn version and ditch the San Fran monument. But everything else in Endgame would have remained exactly as it was. The brothers Russo wanted half a decade because they wanted folks to have moved on with their lives. Which is great for Endgame, but not so great for the films and TV shows after Endgame.

 

[TheVileOne]

That's what I'm referring to. Undoing what Thanos did would have as big an impact as the people disappearing. Yet only 8 months later the parents of the kids in Peter Parker's school are confident enough in the state of the world to allow two bumbling chaperones to take their kids on a trip overseas. The world seems to have picked up exactly where it left off with barely any real grappling with such gigantic events. Is there a limit with how much focus and detail a logical element like the aftermath of a biblical level event should have in a pop corn series of films based around being a good time at the theater? Yeah, I get that. Again... No one is going to these films for hard sci fi type speculation. But to just act like nothing is different outside of Cap retiring and Tony dyingvetc. feels off.

The Infinity Gauntlet comic got around this by simply resetting everything back to the way it was right before Thanos started his latest quest.

Granted, the drawback there is that basically almost all of what he had done is erased like it never happened.

My memory is also hazy, but when Thanos did it in the comics I also think it was not like an apocalypse but they were all snapped out of reality like they never existed. But heroes clearly recognized people were missing and people were gone.

Pros and cons.

 

[Xeno]

The impact of a 5 year dusting would have been so momentous that every MCU and TV show in Phases 4 through 11 should devote at least 10 minutes of run time on the snap and its impact. Which I absolutely do not want to see.

For that reason I would have preferred the snap was just a one year vacation. World changing, yes, but much easier to hand wave away. You would have to replace adorable moppet Morgan with a newborn version and ditch the San Fran monument. But everything else in Endgame would have remained exactly as it was. The brothers Russo wanted half a decade because they wanted folks to have moved on with their lives. Which is great for Endgame, but not so great for the films and TV shows after Endgame.

The gap doesn't have to pose a huge problem for upcoming movies and shows. That time and the challenges presented for various characters are dramatic opportunities that creative writers will take advantage of. The people of the MCU are living in -- and dealing with -- a radically different reality than they were before. Just imagine the possibilities this poses for massive change and growth.

 

[Yowza]

FFH didn't really seem to acknowledge the gap a whole lot.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

The Infinity Gauntlet comic got around this by simply resetting everything back to the way it was right before Thanos started his latest quest.

Granted, the drawback there is that basically almost all of what he had done is erased like it never happened.

My memory is also hazy, but when Thanos did it in the comics I also think it was not like an apocalypse but they were all snapped out of reality like they never existed. But heroes clearly recognized people were missing and people were gone.

Pros and cons.

I mention this all in my posts.


Also in the IG comic things were indeed Apocalyptic. The world is wrecked not only by the Snap but even before that Thanos in a rage causes an energy wave which rocks the planet and creates various biblical type disasters. The battle with the cosmic beings then adds further instability which puts Earth in even more danger.

 

[SPO2 Dalisay]

FFH didn't really seem to acknowledge the gap a whole lot.

Except for the teacher whose wife left, Far From Home focused entirely on the blipped, and for them it was just a big cosmic joke. The survivors of the snapture turned out to be the victims of Thanos along with the never spoken of, as to messy and time consuming, colateral damage snap surviving but dead people